A total of 46 books (26 fiction, 20 nonfiction) have been selected to the longlists for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction released on October 26.

Judging by the linked descriptions for all the longlisted books, it seems the only one that might be claimed as sff is Marie-Helene Bertino’s Parakeet.(Farrar), because “The Bride receives a visit from her long-dead grandmother in the form of a very alive parakeet.” 

Two more longlisted authors have been up for sff awards in the past, but Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel has a Ponzi scheme at its core and no fantastic elements are mentioned in the linked synopsis. Likewise, Charles Yu, whose many genre works include How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (2010), is listed for a non-sff book Interior Chinatown.

A six-title shortlist—three each for the fiction and nonfiction medals—will be chosen from longlist titles and announced on November 17, 2020. The two medal winners will be announced online on Thursday, February 4, 2021. The Carnegie Medal winners will each receive $5,000.

FICTION

• Ackerman, Elliot. Red Dress in Black and White. (Knopf)
• Akhtar, Ayad. Homeland Elegies. (Little, Brown)
• Bennett, Brit. The Vanishing Half. (Riverhead)
• Bertino, Marie-Helene. Parakeet. (Farrar)
• Erdrich, Louise. The Night Watchman. (Harper)
• Ford, Kelli Jo. Crooked Hallelujah. (Grove)
• Gyasi, Yaa. Transcendent Kingdom. (Knopf)
• Herbert, Julián. Translated by Christina MacSweeney. Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino. (Graywolf)
• Lacey, Catherine. Pew. (Farrar)
• Leilani, Raven. Luster. (Farrar)
• Majumdar, Megha. A Burning. (Knopf)
• Mandel, Emily St. John. The Glass Hotel. (Knopf)
• McBride, James. Deacon King Kong. (Riverhead)
• McCann, Colum. Apeirogon. (Random)
• Melchor, Fernanda. Translated by Sophie Hughes. Hurricane Season. (New Directions)
• Mitchell, David. Utopia Avenue. (Random)
• O’Farrell, Maggie. Hamnet. (Knopf)
• Offill, Jenny. Weather. (Knopf)
• Ono, Masatsugu. Translated by Angus Turvill. Echo on the Bay. (Two Lines)
• Robinson, Marilynne.  Jack. (Farrar)
• Stuart, Douglas. Shuggie Bain. (Grove)
• Swift, Graham. Here We Are. (Knopf)
• Tobar, Héctor. The Last Great Road Bum. (Farrar/MCD)
• Yoon, Paul. Run Me to Earth. (Simon & Schuster)
• Yu, Charles. Interior Chinatown. (Pantheon)
• Washington, Bryan. Memorial. (Riverhead)

NONFICTION

• Bregman, Rutger. Translated by Elizabeth Manton and Erica Moore. Humankind: A Hopeful History. (Little, Brown) 
• Cornejo Villavicencio, Karla. The Undocumented Americans. (Random/One World)
• Demick, Barbara. Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town. (Random)
• Giggs, Rebecca. Fathoms: The World in the Whale. (Simon & Schuster)
• Harper, Michele. The Beauty in Breaking. (Riverhead)
• Harvey, Miles. The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch. (Little, Brown)
• Hong, Cathy Park. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning. (Random/One World)
• Jackson, Jeffrey H. Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis. (Algonquin)
• Kolker, Robert. Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family. (Doubleday)
• Lalami, Laila. Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America. (Pantheon)
• Mikhail, Alan. God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World. (Norton/Liveright)
• Moore, Wayétu. The Dragons, the Giant, the Women. (Graywolf)
• Payne, Les and Tamara Payne. The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X. (Norton/Liveright)
• Rankine, Claudia. Just Us: An American Conversation. (Graywolf)
• Shapland, Jenn. My Autobiography of Carson McCullers. (Tin House)
• Solnit, Rebecca. Recollections of My Nonexistence. (Viking)
• Svensson, Patrik. The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creatures in the Natural World. (Ecco)
• Trethewey, Natasha. Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir. (Ecco)
• Wilkerson, Isabel. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. (Random)
• Yang, Jia Lynn. One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle over American Immigration, 1924-1965. (Norton)